See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/329567856

Drip Irrigation for Small Farmers

Article  in  Water International · March 2001

DOI: 10.1080/02508060108686882

CITATIONS READS

100 3,199

4 authors, including:

Sandra Postel Paul Polak

40 PUBLICATIONS   7,136 CITATIONS   
Paul Polak Enterprises
46 PUBLICATIONS   1,170 CITATIONS   
SEE PROFILE
SEE PROFILE

Fernando González-Villareal
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
52 PUBLICATIONS   483 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Irrigation View project

Hydraulic Engineering View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Fernando González-Villareal on 11 December 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Water International

ISSN: 0250-8060 (Print) 1941-1707 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwin20

Drip Irrigation for Small Farmers

Sandra Postel , Paul Polak , Fernando Gonzales & Jack Keller

To cite this article: Sandra Postel , Paul Polak , Fernando Gonzales & Jack Keller (2001) Drip
Irrigation for Small Farmers, Water International, 26:1, 3-13, DOI: 10.1080/02508060108686882

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508060108686882

Published online: 22 Jan 2009.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 785

View related articles

Citing articles: 53 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rwin20

Download by: [UNAM Ciudad Universitaria] Date: 28 March 2017, At: 16:24
 International Water Resources Association
Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, Pages 3–13, March 2001

Drip Irrigation for Small Farmers

A New Initiative to Alleviate Hunger and Poverty
Sandra Postel, Member IWRA, Global Water Policy Project, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA,
Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises, Lakewood, Colorado, USA,
Fernando Gonzales, Washington, DC, USA, The World Bank, and
Jack Keller, Keller-Blisner Engineering, LLC, Logan, Utah, USA
Abstract: Despite the impressive gains in global food production over the last half century, an
estimated 790 million people remain hungry. Many of the chronically hungry are poor farm families,
who have neither the means to produce the food they need nor sufficient income to purchase it. For them,
access to irrigation water, or the means to use the water they have more productively, is a key to
increasing their crop production, their incomes, and their household food security. Ironically, a technol-
ogy typically associated with wealthy farmers, drip irrigation, may hold the key to alleviating a signifi-
cant share of rural hunger and poverty. A new spectrum of drip systems keyed to different income levels
and farm sizes (beginning with a US$5 bucket kit for home gardens) now exists and can form the
backbone of a second green revolution, this one aimed specifically at poor farmers in sub-Saharan
Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We describe the experience with affordable drip irrigation to date,
including its growing use in India and Nepal, as well as the wide range of geographic areas and
conditions where these systems may be useful. We propose a major new international initiative to spread
low-cost drip irrigation through private microenterprise, with the aim of reducing the hunger and
increasing the incomes of 150 million of the world’s poorest rural people over the next 15 years. Our
estimates suggest that such an initiative could boost annual net income among the rural poor by some
US$3 billion per year and inject two or three times this amount into the poorest parts of the developing
world’s economies.
Keywords: Irrigation, water scarcity, poverty, hunger, food production, drip irrigation,
microenterprise.

half of India’s children are underweight (Gardner and

Introduction
One of the clearest lessons of the last half century of
agricultural development is that an adequate global supply
of food is a necessary but not sufficient condition for elimi-
nating hunger. World grain production has tripled since 1950,
and now totals approximately 1.87 billion tons per year
(Brown et al., 1999), more than enough to provide an ad-
equate diet for the world’s 6 billion people. Yet the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 1999)
reports that 790 million people, approximately one out of
five in the developing world, are chronically hungry.
Like trickle-down economics, trickle-down food secu-
rity does not work for the very poor. The impressive in-
creases in national per capita grain production, stimulated
by the green revolution, mask large pockets of severe hun-
ger and poverty. The production and trade of more “sur-
plus” food does not solve the problem of hunger because
those most in need of the food are too poor to buy it, even
at today’s historically low prices. At the national level, for
example, India is self-sufficient in grain; but more than
Halweil, 2000).
The overwhelming majority of hungry people live in
rural areas of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. They
are among the 1.3 billion people who survive on less than
US$1 a day. They are typically landless laborers or culti-
vators of very small plots, from which they get neither
sufficient crop production nor income to ensure house-
hold food security. In the so-called “poverty square” of
South Asia, for example, more than half of the farmland
consists of marginal and small farms less than one hect-
are in size. Moreover, because of rapid population growth,
the average farm size in this region has decreased by half
every 15 years since 1960.
Small farmers could double the crop output and in-
come generated by these small plots if they had access to
a key ingredient of land productivity – water. In monsoon
climates with a long dry season, as well as in semi-arid
and arid regions, access to irrigation water is critical to
boosting and stabilizing crop production. With a secure
water supply, farmers can choose to invest in higher-yield-

3
4 S. Postel, P. Polak, F. Gonzales, and J. Keller
ing seeds, grow higher-value crops, and harvest an addi-
tional crop or two each year. Irrigated plots in developing
countries commonly yield twice as much as rain-fed plots
do (Postel, 1999).
By raising small-farm productivity, access to irrigation
water is also key to improving rural livelihoods and revital-
izing rural economies. It creates jobs for people both with
and without land, since more people are needed to har-
vest, process, and market the crops and to supply farm
inputs. The additional farm income ripples through the lo-
cal economy, generating employment and higher incomes
for off-farm workers as well. Access to irrigation water
broadens farmers’ crop choices and enables them to grow
higher-value vegetables and fruits for the marketplace.
By creating more secure and stable rural communities,
access to productivity-enhancing irrigation water can also
help stem the tide of migration to already overcrowded
cities and slums (van Hofwegen and Svendsen, 2000).
Despite its remarkable gains, the modern irrigation age
has failed to meet the widespread need for very inexpen-
sive, divisible irrigation systems for poor farmers on small
plots. The Green Revolution may have tripled the global
harvest, but it completely bypassed the majority of the
world’s small farmers and their families. Ironically, an irri-
gation technology long viewed as appropriate only for
wealthier farmers now appears to hold great promise for
small, poor farmers – drip irrigation. New evidence from
many parts of the world shows that, with affordable drip
systems, small farmers can shift from subsistence pro-
duction to higher value production for the market, doubling
their income and greatly enhancing household food secu-
rity. The spread of affordable drip irrigation technologies
can form the backbone of a second green revolution aimed
at sustainably lifting the production and incomes of poor
farmers.
Irrigation’s Missing Link
Global irrigated area has increased more than sixfold
over the last century, from approximately 40 million hect-
ares in 1900 to more than 260 million hectares (Postel,
1999; FAO ). Today, 40 percent of the world’s food comes
from the 18 percent of cropland that is irrigated (Postel,
1999; FAO). Extending irrigation to a portion of the 82
percent of cropland watered only by rainfall is essential to
increasing global food production and, more directly, to
reducing rural hunger and poverty.
Some 95 percent of the world’s 1.1 billion farmers live
in developing countries (van Hofwegen and Svendsen,
2000). The vast majority of them cultivate plots less than
two hectares (five acres) in size. Although a small subset
of these farmers may benefit from canal irrigation sys-
tems, most are in locations where subsidized surface
schemes are too expensive or impractical to build. A por-
tion of these small farmers are at the tail-ends of existing
canal systems, but because irrigators in the head-reaches
IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001
siphon off most of the water supply, they do not get suffi-
cient water to markedly improve their productivity and in-
comes. Chambers (1988) has estimated, for example, that
25 to 40 percent of the area declared irrigated in India
suffers from tail-end deprivation.
Groundwater is a potential source of irrigation water
in many agricultural areas. However, even the least-ex-
pensive diesel pump-and-tubewell systems cost US$200
to US$500, way out of reach for farmers earning scarcely
this much in a year. Moreover, these systems are typically
not economical on plots of less than two hectares, and so,
unless poor farmers can purchase water from a wealthier
neighbor, these systems are largely irrelevant to them
(Polak et al., 1999a).
Raising the productivity of small-holders requires an
entirely new approach to the design of irrigation systems.
By and large, the irrigation sector has focused on: (1) large-
scale canal projects that deliver large quantities of water
to farms; (2) large-scale groundwater projects; and (3)
high-quality pressurized sprinkler and drip systems that
greatly improve the efficiency of water application, but
that are too expensive for small-holders. The missing piece
in global irrigation are systems designed for poor farmers
on small plots who need access to irrigation water and/or
a way to stretch a scarce supply of water. Such systems
would meet the following criteria:
• Affordability: A spectrum of irrigation systems are
needed that place affordability before top-quality, and
that can be purchased by farmers earning no more
than US$200 to US$300 per year.
• Rapid payback: Poor farmers are very risk-averse.
They will typically be attracted only to innovations that
increase returns two- to three-fold.
• Divisibility and Expandability: Systems must be adapt-
able to varying farm sizes, down to micro-plots of one-
tenth of a hectare or less. Farmers must be able to
purchase a system small enough to be affordable, and
then to gradually expand the system as his/her income
increases.
• Water efficiency: A majority of the poorest farmers
are in arid or semi-arid lands or tropical areas with a
long dry season. For them, water for crop production
is scarce. Systems that help them stretch their scarce
supply of water enable them to expand their cultivated
area, increase yields, diversify crop production, and
generate more income.
Neither the private irrigation industry, the international
development banks, the international agricultural research
centers, nor government enterprises have made a con-
certed effort to fill this huge technological gap. Doing so
clearly requires a new institutional approach and set of
priorities. As Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs (1999) has
pointed out, “To the extent that the poor face distinctive
challenges, science and technology must be directed pur-
 Drip Irrigation for Small Farmers:
A New Initiative to Alleviate Hunger and Poverty 5

posefully towards them. In today’s global set-up, that to raise crop yields by 20 to 90 percent (Suryawanshi,
rarely happens.” 1995; World Bank, 1993). In India, research from a vari-
ety of institutions has consistently shown drip to cut water
use by 30 to 60 percent and to raise yields by 5 to 50
The Untapped Potential of percent compared with conventional surface irrigation
Low Cost Drip Irrigation methods (Indian National Committee, 1994; Sivanappan,
Drip irrigation is widely recognized as one of the most 1994) [see Table 1]. As recently as 1985, India had only
efficient methods of watering crops (Keller and Bliesner, 1,000 hectares under drip irrigation (Indian National Com-
1990). Since its commercial acceptance in the mid-1970s, mittee, 1994), but in 1998 the estimated area under drip
the hardware used in drip irrigation systems has evolved has expanded to 225,000 hectares (Polak and Sivanappan,
to fit large fields and to minimize management and labor 1998). Drip irrigation’s combination of water savings and
requirements. As a result, the standard hardware that is yield increases typically produces at least a doubling of
now available is expensive and rather sophisticated. What water productivity, yield per unit water, and makes it a
is not widely known, however, is that a spectrum of drip leading technology in the global challenge of boosting crop
systems is now available that meet the above criteria for production in the face of serious water constraints (Postel,
small-holders: affordability, rapid payback, divisibility, and 1999).
water-efficiency. Generally viewed as a technology for
large commercial farmers engaged in high-value agricul- Table 1. Water Productivity Gains from Shifting to Drip from
ture, drip irrigation is now showing great promise for rais- Conventional Surface Irrigation in India1
ing the land productivity, water efficiency, and incomes of
Water
poor small-holders. Change Change in Change in Productivity2
in Crop Yield (%) Water Use (%) Gain (%)
A Brief History of Drip Irrigation
The creation of inexpensive, weather-resistant plastic Banana +52 -45 +173
after World War II paved the way for drip irrigation. Cabbage +2 -60 +150
Cotton +27 -3 +169
Through a network of perforated plastic tubing installed Cotton +25 -60 +255
on or below the soil surface, drip systems deliver water Grapes +23 -48 +134
under low pressure almost directly to the roots of plants Potato +46 ~0 + 46
through small holes or emitters. When well maintained and Sugarcane +6 -60 +163
combined with soil-moisture monitoring or other ways of Sugarcane +20 -30 +70
Sugarcane +29 -47 +91
assessing crops’ water requirements, drip irrigation can Sugarcane +33 -65 +205
achieve application efficiencies as high as 95 percent Sweet potato +39 -60 +243
(Vickers, in press). Losses to evaporation, deep percola- Tomato +5 -27 +49
tion and surface runoff are negligible. Farmers can also Tomato +50 -39 +145
apply fertilizer in measured quantities through drip sys- 1
Results from various Indian research institutes.
tems, simultaneously reducing chemical use and the po- 2
Measured as crop yield per unit of water supplied.
tential for land and water pollution. Sources: Postel, 1999, based on data from Indian National Committee
Israeli engineers developed drip systems for commer- 1994, and Sivanappan, 1994.
cial applications. By the mid-1970s, farmers in a half-dozen
countries, Australia, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, and
South Africa, were using drip methods on a portion of Conventional Drip Systems for Medium to Large
their cropland (Postel, 1992). Starting from a small base Fields
of approximately 56,000 hectares worldwide in the mid- Although the area under micro-irrigation has expanded
1970s, drip and other micro-irrigation systems spread rap- 50-fold over the last two decades, it still represents only 1
idly to 1.6 million hectares by 1991, the latest year for percent of the world’s total irrigated area. The principal
which a global survey has been completed (Bucks, 1995). barriers to its expansion have been high capital costs, typi-
Bucks (1998) estimated that the global area under micro- cally ranging between US$1,500 and US$2,500 per hect-
irrigation has likely expanded by 75 percent since 1991, are, and the lack of divisibility in commercially available
which would place the current total at approximately 2.8 systems. In India, for example, the typical small farmer
million hectares. cultivates five separate plots, each ranging in size from
This impressive growth is attributable to the higher 0.1– 0.2 hectares (Polak et al., 1997), but the largest manu-
crop yields and water use efficiencies obtained with drip facturer of drip systems in India does not sell a system
irrigation and the wider dissemination of these field re- appropriate for plots of less than 0.4 hectares (Polak, 1997).
sults. In countries as diverse as India, Israel, Jordan, Spain, A principal reason for the high capital cost of most
and the United States, studies have consistently shown commercially available drip irrigation systems is that hard-
drip irrigation to reduce water use by 30 to 70 percent and ware components are optimized for fields of four hect-

IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001

6 S. Postel, P. Polak, F. Gonzales, and J. Keller
ares or larger and designed to minimize labor and man-
agement costs. Furthermore, the drip lines are relatively
long (200–400 meters) and the emitters (which do the drip-
ping) are designed to be compact and to not interfere with
mechanical cultivation of fields. In the case of row crops,
the drip lines are often discarded after one growing sea-
son; with tree crops, they typically remain in place for
several years. This requires: (1) relatively large-diameter
drip line tubing; (2) sophisticated emitters that operate at
relatively high pressures (one-atmosphere) while having
flow paths that are large enough so they do not clog too
readily, and (3) expensive filters to minimize clogging of
the emitters. Drip systems on larger fields also require
careful engineering and design to assure that the relative
pressure differences among the emitters are small so that
the application (drip rate) throughout the field is uniform.
(Keller and Bliesner, 1990.)
By contrast, early drip systems were simple and used
holes or micro tubing instead of sophisticated emitters.
These simple designs were abandoned because they did
not fit the needs of modern medium- and large-scale farm-
ing in the developed countries. However, these early sys-
tem designs are well suited for drip irrigating small plots:
the drip lines can be relatively short and the elevation dif-
ferences within the plots are typically minimal, so pres-
sure losses are small. Moreover, there is usually sufficient
labor to cultivate around the micro tubing and to periodi-
cally inspect and clean the simple hole emitters or micro-
tubes.
Some efforts have been made to promote drip irriga-
tion for small plots, but until recently, no one imagined the
full potential of a market-driven approach for extending
affordable drip irrigation to serve poor farmers in develop-
ing countries.
Affordable Drip Systems for Small Farmers
Prospects for the expansion of drip irrigation have
brightened markedly over the last several years with the
development of a spectrum of drip systems keyed to dif-
ferent income levels and farm sizes. Results from field
trials demonstrate that low cost drip systems easily pay
for themselves in one growing season, and stimulate shifts
to more intensive agricultural practices by small farmers.
As discussed further below, the early stages of marketing
low-cost drip systems in India and Nepal suggest enor-
mous potential for sales growth, and, most importantly, for
drip irrigation to markedly increase the incomes and food
security of small farmers.
International Development Enterprises, a non-profit
organization specializing in the creation and marketing of
affordable small-scale irrigation, has developed four prin-
cipal types of low-pressure gravity drip systems for small
farmers (Polak and Sivannapan, 1998; Polak et al., 1999a;
Polak, 2000a):
• Bucket Kits: These entry-level systems consist of a
IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001
simple 20-liter household bucket attached to a pole at
about shoulder-height. The bucket is equipped with a
10-meter lateral line, from which 26 micro-tubes ex-
tend (see Figure 1). When placed mid-way between
parallel crop rows, each micro-tube can irrigate four
plants. The bucket needs to be filled with water two to
four times per day. In this way, each bucket kit, which
in India costs about US$5 (including the bucket), irri-
gates 100 individual plants over a 25 m2 area, providing
all the vegetables a family needs and adding critical
vitamins and minerals to the diet. Since the labor bur-
den (which often falls to women) of hand-watering
home gardens can discourage plots of this size, the
bucket kit offers an initial step toward greater food
security and cash income. Moreover, if the family can
sell a portion of their crops, they can use the profit to
expand their irrigation system.
Figure 1. Schematic of a Bucket Kit System.
• Drum Kits: One step up from the bucket kit, these sys-
tems consist of a 200-liter drum from which extend
five lateral lines. Each lateral line is ten meters long
and fitted with 26 micro tubes, allowing each drum kit
to irrigate a 125 m2 plot, an area five times larger than
the bucket kit covers. Each drum kit costs US$25, and
can be expanded in 125 m2 increments at a cost of
US$14 per increment (see Figure 2).
• Shiftable Drip Systems: These systems resemble more
conventional drip systems, but have much lower capi-
tal costs because they are designed to be shiftable in-
stead of stationary. Whereas conventional systems
require a plastic lateral line for each row of crops, these
systems consist of shiftable lateral lines, each of which
irrigates ten rows. An off-the-shelf plastic tank placed
two to four meters above the field (and equipped with
a simple cloth filter) provides adequate pressure for
the system. Water drips out of baffled holes in the lat-
 Drip Irrigation for Small Farmers:
A New Initiative to Alleviate Hunger and Poverty 7

systems. The cost reduction results mainly from a sys-

tem design that allows each lateral line, an expensive
component, to irrigate four rows of crops instead of
one or two. This is accomplished by extending micro
tubes from both sides of the lateral and positioning each
one between two closely spaced parallel rows. The
system is pressurized by a concrete tank placed about
four meters above the field and equipped with a low-
cost filter. Adapting an existing electric or diesel pump
using a bypass valve can also derive the needed sys-
tem pressure. Stationary micro tube systems cost ap-
proximately $250 for 4,000 m2 (1 acre), or US$625 per
hectare, about one-third as much as conventional drip
systems.

Field tests suggest that the stationary micro tube sys-

tems offer similar water-savings and yield benefits over
Figure 2. Schematic of a Drum Kit, micro tube version. traditional surface (flood/furrow) systems as the more
expensive conventional drip systems offer. In field trials in
Madhya Pradesh, India, with adjacent 2,000 m2 plots of
eral lines or out of micro tubes extending from the lat-
seed cotton, the field irrigated by a low-cost stationary
erals, rather than out of expensive emitters. The shift-
drip system yielded 670 kg/ha compared with 500 kg/ha
able system, which was first developed in Nepal, works
for the flood-irrigated field, a 34 percent yield gain. Water
well for closely spaced, low-growing crops, including
use was estimated to be 55 percent less with the low-cost
many vegetables, in areas with relatively low labor
drip system (IDE, 1998). Previous studies in Coimbatore
costs. These systems cost about US$50 for a 1,200 m2
in southern India comparing cotton irrigated by conven-
plot (see Figure 3).
tional drip versus flood systems showed water savings
• Stationary Micro Tube Systems: These systems con-
ranging from 43 percent to 79 percent and yield increases
sist of plastic lateral lines equipped with micro tubes,
ranging from 25 percent to 40 percent (Polak and
and can be used on small or large plots. They cost
Sivanappan, 1998). Tests in Rajasthan, India, of the micro
approximately two-thirds less than conventional drip

Figure 3. Schematic of a Drum Kit, Shiftable Hole and Baffle Version.

IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001

8 S. Postel, P. Polak, F. Gonzales, and J. Keller
tube system on sugar cane showed lower gains in yield
(14 percent) than more expensive conventional drip sys-
tems (29 percent) when each was compared with flood
irrigation methods (IDE, 1998). In both the cotton and sugar
cane trials, low-cost drip resulted in a substantial increase
in water productivity, output per unit water, due to both the
yield gains and water savings.
In early 1999, the Swiss aid agency, Swiss Develop-
ment Cooperation, sponsored a study of low-cost drip sys-
tems used by a small sample of farmers in the Indian State
of Maharashtra. The farms ranged in size from 100 m2 up
to 0.2 hectares and included a mix of drip system types. A
variety of crops were irrigated on these plots, including
beans, vegetables, papaya, and flowers. Compared with
flood irrigation methods, the study found average water
savings of 55 percent, labor savings of 58 percent, and
reductions in expenditures on fertilizer and pesticides av-
eraging 16 percent. With the drip systems, some farmers
obtained cash profits for the first time, while others saw
substantial increases — 50 percent to more than 300 per-
cent — in their net profits. In addition, household con-
sumption of fresh vegetables increased from occasionally
to almost daily suggesting improved variety and nutrition
in the diet. Finally, because drip-irrigated fields had fewer
weeds, the workload on women and children was reduced
(Bilgi, 1999).
Low-cost drip systems have begun to spread rapidly
where they have been introduced. So far, small farmers
have purchased approximately 13,000 micro-irrigation sys-
tems, including about 8,000 in India, 2,300 in Nepal, and
1,700 in Sri Lanka. In addition, 60 systems are being field-
tested in Vietnam and another 60 in Bangladesh. At the
initiation of Fideicomiso de Riesgo Compartido (FIRCO),
a technology transfer organization within the Ministry of
Agriculture of the Government of Mexico, some 50 test
plots have been established in four states in Mexico. In
China, International Development Enterprises has estab-
lished 160 demonstration plots in Gansu and Shanxi prov-
inces. Preliminary results in virtually all cases look
promising. For example, results with drum kits (costing
$20 to $30 per 100 m2) being tested in Vietnam show sub-
stantial yield increases, labor savings, and income gains
(Van Quang, 2000).
Moreover, a rapidly expanding array of low-cost drip
systems is now available to small farmers in different parts
of the world. The Israeli firm Netafim, the largest interna-
tional drip irrigation company in the world, is now market-
ing a high-quality, 1000-m2 system in China, India, and
Africa. It is still too expensive, however, for very poor
farmers. During the past 25 years, the Yanshan Institute
in Beijing has installed thousands of hectares of low-cost
micro tube drip systems in China, although they are not
yet available for small plots. And for the past several years,
the New York-based non-profit Chapin Watermatics has
distributed thousands of bucket kits for irrigating kitchen
gardens to poor rural families in Africa and elsewhere.
IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001
The Worldwide Market for
Affordable Drip Irrigation
During the last 30 years, drip irrigation has proven to
be a high-quality method of irrigation for farmers in wa-
ter-short areas, growing high-value crops, and able to in-
vest US$2,000–2,500 per hectare in new capital equipment.
For the private drip irrigation industry, the principal mar-
kets have been in the Middle East (e.g., Israel and Jor-
dan), southern and Mediterranean Europe (e.g., Greece
and Spain), and in the United States (e.g., California). The
total capitalized value of existing drip irrigation systems is
on the order of US$5 to US$7 billion, an impressive figure,
but a drop in the bucket compared with the estimated
US$1.9 trillion capitalized value of all existing irrigation
assets worldwide (Postel, 1999).
The emergence of affordable drip systems that are
suitable for small plots has the potential to expand the area
under drip irrigation many-fold. Although drip irrigation is
not practical for closely spaced crops such as wheat, it
can be used to irrigate most fruit and vegetable crops, as
well as cotton and sugarcane, two thirsty and widely planted
crops. It has the potential to greatly improve environmen-
tal conditions in the water-short, salt-laden Aral Sea basin,
for example, where the majority of the nearly 8 million
hectares of irrigated land is watered by highly inefficient
furrow and flood methods (Postel, 1999). Researchers
estimate drip irrigation’s potential in India to be on the
order of 10 million hectares (Indian National Committee,
1994), and the potential in China is likely equally large.
Perhaps more important than the size of the potential
market, however, is the location of those markets and who
they can benefit. Affordable drip systems are being in-
stalled in the hills of Nepal and northern India, where wa-
ter from community tanks is scarce and cropland is terraced
and prone to erosion. Drip systems have great potential as
a feature of watershed projects in South Asia, sub-Sa-
haran Africa, and elsewhere. In these areas, very labor-
intensive efforts go into capturing and storing rainwater
runoff, for example, by constructing check dams or tanks,
but then that water is often applied very inefficiently to
fields. Affordable drip systems could markedly raise the
productivity of this harvested rainwater, thereby making
watershed projects more economical. Low-cost drip sys-
tems also have the potential to raise the productivity and
incomes of canal system “tail-enders,” whose supplies are
often insufficient to irrigate their entire plot of land. For
small farmers with human-powered pumps or who pur-
chase groundwater through local water markets, afford-
able drip systems can reduce their water use and costs, or
allow them to expand their crop production with the same
quantity of water.
In short, the potential market for affordable drip irri-
gation is larger, more varied, and more geographically wide-
spread than for conventional drip irrigation. The difference
in these markets is akin to the difference between the
 Drip Irrigation for Small Farmers:
A New Initiative to Alleviate Hunger and Poverty
supercomputers of the 1970s, which only a handful of uni-
versities could afford, and the desktop computers of the
1990s, which quickly spread to millions of households. Most
importantly, making low-cost drip irrigation accessible to
millions of small-holders would directly address the prob-
lems of poverty, hunger, and water scarcity that are en-
trenched and spreading in so much of the developing world.
Microenterprise and Rural Marketing
As any entrepreneur knows well, an idea or technol-
ogy by itself will not change the world. To make a differ-
ence, it has to be sold. The existence of an innovative
spectrum of affordable drip irrigation technologies in no
way guarantees that these systems will come into wide-
spread use. The potential customers are mostly very poor;
many are illiterate. There are fewer mechanisms for tar-
geted marketing, such as radio and television, to reach
these customers. Rural infrastructure is often underdevel-
oped, making it harder to bring customers and markets
together. In many ways, the cards are stacked against the
dissemination of technologies for the rural poor.
Creating new markets that serve poor farmers is a
critical but under-attended component of the challenge of
reducing rural poverty and hunger. The traditional approach
to development taken by international aid agencies, re-
gional banks, government agencies, and private non-gov-
ernmental groups has too often treated poor farmers as
recipients of charity rather than as paying customers. In
order to achieve the productivity and economic gains that
affordable drip irrigation offers, it is first essential to lay
the groundwork for a sustainable system of local manu-
facturing, selling, and repairing of these technologies, in
short, a sustainable network of microenterprise.
The Treadle Pump: A Model of Success
Fortunately, the creation of new markets for poor farm-
ers is not wholly uncharted territory. Over the last 17 years,
large areas of Bangladesh have been transformed by a
human-powered water-lifting device called a treadle pump.
The treadle pump is operated by a stair-step walking mo-
tion on two long bamboo poles or treadles, which in turn
activates two steel cylinders. Groundwater is suctioned
into the cylinders and dispelled into a field channel. Cost-
ing less than US$35 (including installation of the tubewell),
the treadle pump has enabled very poor farmers to have
direct access to groundwater irrigation for the first time.
With the ability to plant higher-yielding rice seeds as well
as vegetable crops during the dry season, farmers invest-
ing in the treadle pump have experienced increases in net
income averaging approximately US$100 per year. Ap-
proximately 1.2 million treadle pumps have been sold in
Bangladesh alone, leading one research team to call it “a
run-away success.” With this simple technology, farmers
are raising the productivity of more than a quarter million
hectares of farmland and injecting an additional US$350
to US$650 million a year into the poorest parts of the
IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001
9
Bangladeshi economy (Polak et al., 1999a; Postel, 1999).
A key to understanding the treadle pump’s remark-
able success in Bangladesh has much to do with its mar-
keting, an activity sometimes maligned and often ignored
by development groups and international agencies. With a
philosophy of treating poor people as customers, Interna-
tional Development Enterprises (IDE) worked to stimu-
late market demand through a creative information and
marketing strategy, as well as to help spawn a self-sus-
taining network of local pump manufacturers, dealers, and
installers. IDE made the technology known to farmers
through billboards, calendars, and demonstrations at vil-
lage and regional markets. A 90-minute movie featuring
well-known Bangladeshi movie stars included the treadle
pump in the plot, and was shown in open air settings to
some one million people a year (Polak et al., 1999a).
Simultaneously, IDE worked directly with local manu-
facturers to diversify the production base, helped establish
a network of dealers who would sell the pump at a rea-
sonable profit, and trained a cadre of local technicians to
install the pumps. This private sector network now con-
sists of approximately 80 manufacturers, 1,100 dealers,
and more than 3,000 installers (IDE, 2000). Since 1985, a
total investment by donors of US$12.6 million and by
Bangladeshi farmers themselves of US$39.8 million has
yielded US$650 million in increased income from crop pro-
duction alone (Polak et al., 1999b).
IDE and its partners are now working to expand the
market for treadle pumps in eastern India and Nepal, where
the potential is estimated to number around 10 million
pumps. If this market can be saturated, and annual in-
come per pump of US$100 materializes as in Bangladesh,
then this simple technology would increase the annual in-
come of South Asia’s poorest households by US$1 billion.
According to Shah (undated) who conducted an assess-
ment of the social impact of the treadle pump in South
Asia, such an accomplishment would be “one of the most
powerful and best targeted poverty-alleviation interven-
tions the world has ever seen.”
Making it Happen: Expanding Low Cost Drip
Irrigation by One Million Hectares Per Year
Our research and field experience suggests that the
potential crop production, food security, and income gains
from affordable drip irrigation are much greater than that
of the treadle pump. Building on the successful rural mass
marketing of the treadle pump in Bangladesh, we are now
initiating a new effort to further the use of affordable drip
irrigation by smallholders in poor regions of the world. Our
goal is an ambitious one, to expand the area under drip
irrigation by one million hectares a year. We believe that
such a bold initiative is required to confront the challenges
of hunger, poverty, and water scarcity that remain en-
trenched and threaten to worsen in many parts of the de-
veloping world. Achieving this goal over the next 15 years
10 S. Postel, P. Polak, F. Gonzales, and J. Keller
could transform the farming intensity of approximately 30
million small holder families, and increase the net incomes
of 150 million of the world’s poorest rural people by US$3
billion per year.
The Places to Start
The largest concentrations of poor and hungry people
are found in the rural areas of South Asia, northwestern
China, and sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of poor farm-
ers in these regions lack access to affordable irrigation,
face production constraints resulting from seasonal or
chronic water scarcity, and cultivate less than two hect-
ares of land. As a result, these are logical places to launch
a wider effort to spread affordable drip irrigation to small
farmers.
As already noted, more than 13,000 small farmers have
purchased and installed four different varieties of low-cost
drip systems in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. They have
demonstrated water savings of approximately 50 percent,
crop yield increases of 30 percent to 70 percent, and short-
ened crop cycles. Some 4,000 of these systems have been
installed by small hill farmers, which sets the stage for
these areas to serve as training and demonstration centers
for further dissemination in poor hill areas.
The greatest potential for expansion in South Asia is
in India. The majority of that nation’s estimated 10-mil-
lion-hectare drip potential (Indian National Committee,
1994) lies in the water-short states of Madhya Pradesh,
Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and
Tamil Nadu. A vibrant drip irrigation industry, which in-
cludes some 75 private companies, already exists in India.
Unfortunately, the national government’s policy of subsi-
dizing drip systems of one hectare or larger has steered
the private sector toward larger systems, leaving the poorest
and smallest farmers out of the market. However, a new
sector of micro-enterprises has begun to produce drip pack-
ages for plots from 15 m2 to 0.5 hectares, and there is
hope that government subsidy policies will begin to sup-
port the adoption of small, low-cost systems.
In China, the poorest small farmers are disproportion-
ately concentrated in the Yellow River basin in the north-
central part of the country. Water scarcity is a worsening
problem in the hilly Loess Plateau region, as well as in the
north China plain, where water tables across a wide area
are dropping a meter or more per year from the over-
pumping of groundwater. The Yellow River is virtually
tapped out during the dry season, with no outflow to the
sea for major portions of the year (Postel, 2000).
In the upper portions of the watershed, the govern-
ment has installed several hundred thousand rainwater stor-
age systems (each with a capacity of 35 m3) to enable
one or two seasonal irrigations, and thereby augment the
yield of subsistence crops. Low-cost drip systems offer
the potential to greatly increase the productivity of the
scarce irrigation water from these rainwater cisterns.The
results of feasibility studies carried out by IDE, and pre-
IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001
liminary feedback from 160 poor farmers who have in-
stalled low-cost drip systems in Gansu and Shanxi prov-
inces, indicate that the Yellow River basin is ripe for
expanded use of small, affordable drip systems.
In sub-Saharan Africa, many of the constraints to ex-
panding conventional irrigation will also constrain the
spread of low-cost drip irrigation, including the lack of basic
infrastructure, the absence of developed markets, and le-
gal and cultural biases against women, who do 80 percent
of the farm work in this region (Brown and Nooter, 1991).
However, preliminary information suggests a very large
potential demand for the increased production of vegetables
and other horticultural products using low-cost drip irriga-
tion on small farms in peri-urban areas of South Africa.
Because of its strong infrastructure and new water policy
reforms focused on the poor, South Africa is a logical place
to demonstrate the potential of low-cost drip irrigation in
the region. If legal, cultural, and policy barriers can be
overcome, affordable drip irrigation may have substantial
potential in many other sub-Saharan African countries,
where chronic water scarcity poses one of the most seri-
ous constraints to agriculture.
Other regions that seem ripe for the introduction of
affordable drip irrigation include parts of the Middle East,
North Africa, and the Aral Sea basin of Central Asia;
however, preliminary feasibility studies have not yet been
carried out in these regions. In Latin America, bucket kits
for garden plots are currently being tested in Brazil, El
Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Yucatan in Mexico,
with support from the Kellogg Foundation. Finally, because
of their demonstrated ability to increase crop yields, low-
cost drip systems may also offer benefits even in areas
where water scarcity is not typically a constraint. For ex-
ample, initial tests of low-cost drip systems in the Hue
region of Vietnam indicate that farmers growing dry-sea-
son lettuce have doubled their income in comparison with
hand-sprinkling (Polak, 2000b).
Appropriate Water Conditions
Affordable drip systems can operate under a wide
variety of water supply conditions. Simple bucket kits for
home gardens, for instance, can be supplied by a commu-
nity or family drinking water well, and the bucket filled
once or twice a day. With the bucket positioned at shoul-
der-height, sufficient pressure exists to operate the sys-
tem.
With small farmers rapidly turning to groundwater as
a supply source, and with water lifted from wells already
under pressure, matching low-cost drip with groundwater
irrigation makes sense in many areas. An array of afford-
able electric, diesel, and gasoline pump sets are now in
use by small farmers, for example, and drip systems could
be connected to them for more efficient application of
water to fields or to increase crop yields. For very low-
income farmers, there is the intriguing possibility of com-
bining low cost drip with labor-intensive manual water lifting
 Drip Irrigation for Small Farmers:
A New Initiative to Alleviate Hunger and Poverty
technologies, such as the treadle pump. Farm families in
Bangladesh, for example, who may be manually pumping
groundwater for several hours a day during the dry sea-
son, might reduce their labor, increase their crop and wa-
ter productivity, or both, by installing an affordable drip
system.
In areas with no perennial water sources, water sup-
plies often depend on labor-intensive water-harvesting tech-
niques, such as the construction of check dams, percolation
ponds, or tanks. All too often, these water supplies so pains-
takingly captured are then applied wastefully to fields
through inefficient flood irrigation. The global low-cost drip
initiative will work to establish partnerships with non-gov-
ernmental organizations and community groups that are
implementing watershed development projects to encour-
age the use of low-cost drip systems, where applicable, to
improve water and labor productivity.
Opportunities to link affordable drip systems with ca-
nal irrigation projects also exist. As noted previously, in
many canal systems, water is not distributed evenly, with
much more going to the head-enders than to the tail-enders.
The lost productivity, reduced income, and increased ineq-
uity caused by the tail-ender problem makes it one of the
most serious unsolved problems in irrigation (Postel, 1999).
Where some means of short-term storage of canal-deliv-
ered water can be provided, tail-enders might shift to low-
cost drip irrigation of higher-value crops in order to get
more production, value, and income out of their limited
water supply. Short-term storage would usually be needed
because drip irrigation typically operates on a one- to three-
day cycle, in contrast to the 14-day cycle of a typical ca-
nal system. Field trials are needed to test the feasibility of
converting from surface methods to low-cost drip, includ-
ing the testing of a variety of low-cost water storage op-
tions.
Steps in the Process
Spreading the use of low-cost drip irrigation to poor
farmers through the private sector requires special atten-
tion to certain aspects of marketing and dissemination. The
process begins with a multi-disciplinary feasibility study to
determine if the conditions necessary for success, such as
appropriate farm and plot sizes, farmer income, availabil-
ity of irrigation water, and access to markets exist in any
given region of interest. If they do, the next step is to
conduct field trials, obtain feedback from farmers, and then,
based on this feedback, to modify the technology to better
suit local conditions and farmer needs. These modified
drip systems are then installed at several hundred-demon-
stration sites, which are selected for their high visibility to
potential small-farmer customers.
Ease of installation is an important key to the viability
of large-scale dissemination of affordable drip systems.
With conventional drip irrigation, a technician visits each
farm, custom-designs a system for that farm, and then
returns to install it, an intensity of skilled labor that adds
IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001
11
substantially to the cost of conventional drip irrigation. For
small systems applicable to plots of half a hectare or less,
however, all the necessary components can be sold in unit
packages, allowing the system to be expanded as needed
to fit the plot size. With directions explained in an easy-to-
understand picture booklet, the small farmer can install
the system without a technician’s help. Such off-the-shelf
drip irrigation packages have been marketed in volume
for home gardens in North America and Europe for years,
and indications are that they work just as well for small
farmers in Nepal and India.
For low cost drip irrigation to spread widely and be-
come a self-sustaining technology requires the creation of
local private-sector supply chains. These might be initi-
ated by existing drip irrigation companies, agricultural in-
puts companies, or new enterprises established to market
packages of drip irrigation equipment along with seeds,
soluble fertilizer, and biological pest control materials. The
plastic pipes, fittings, micro-tubes, filters, and gravity tanks
that comprise a low cost drip system are available off-
the-shelf in most poor countries. IDE’s experience in In-
dia and Nepal suggests that small plants to assemble and
package the drip systems can be started for less than
US$1,000. These assembly plants then link with a net-
work of village dealers and shops, supported by trained
technicians, to form a private-sector supply chain for both
the drip packages and spare parts.
The key to economic sustainability in the private sec-
tor is threshold sales volume, the point at which each manu-
facturer and dealer is selling enough products profitably to
make a living. Effective marketing and promotion cam-
paigns, which make small-farmer customers aware of low
cost drip, and motivate them to buy it, are critical to reach-
ing supply chain threshold sales volumes. However, since
many small farmers in developing countries are illiterate
and not reachable by mass media, it is essential to tailor all
marketing and promotion strategies to local conditions.
Based on previous experience, including the successful
marketing of the treadle pump in Bangladesh, these might
include wallboards, posters, and calendars; singers and
dancers at village fairs and markets; as well as movies
shown in rural settings. In our experience, an initial invest-
ment in marketing and promotion of up to $10 for each
unit sold is needed to reach volume sales. This investment
can be made by the private sector directly, through a gov-
ernment subsidy, or by foundations and other donors.
National, state, and local governments have important
roles to play in creating policy climates and conditions that
are conducive to the introduction and spread of low-cost
drip irrigation. The Government of Mexico has been the
first to assume a direct leadership role in the global initia-
tive to spread drip irrigation. The government has sup-
ported laboratory testing of low cost drip systems at the
University of Mexico, and, as noted earlier, has supported
field tests in several Mexican states. Because of the fa-
vorable results and positive farmer responses, field tests
12 S. Postel, P. Polak, F. Gonzales, and J. Keller
are now being expanded. This program in Mexico, along
with those in India, Nepal, and China, will serve as dem-
onstration and training sites for further dissemination of
low-cost drip systems to other countries, fostering the
establishment of a global network.
Other Critical Issues
For the low-cost drip irrigation initiative to succeed, a
number of ancillary but critical issues will need to be re-
solved. One is access to markets. In countries such as
China and India, with high population densities and rea-
sonably good availability of transportation options, small
farmers have access to markets to sell their vegetables,
herbs, and other horticultural crops. This is not the case,
however, in many parts of Africa, where population densi-
ties are low, access to transport is poor, and local markets
are easily saturated. In such areas, strategies will be
needed to facilitate small-farmer access to regional and
international markets.
Another critical issue is access to micro-credit. Many
poor farmers will need credit in order to purchase a low
cost drip system, and in many areas, it is not available.
Because the drip systems typically pay for themselves in
one growing season, it would be possible to establish six-
month payback terms, increasing the turnover rate of loans
and the marketability of loan packages in the commercial
market. Existing models for providing credit for items such
as sewing machines through private sector dealer networks
are likely to be equally applicable to the provision of mi-
cro-credit for low-cost drip packages.
Conclusion
Combating persistent rural hunger and poverty in a
world of increasing water scarcity requires new approaches
to agricultural and economic development. Millions of poor
farm families lack access to irrigation water and/or to the
technologies to use what limited water they have efficiently
and productively. The spread of new low-cost drip irriga-
tion systems, designed for a range of farm sizes and in-
come levels, can open the door to irrigation’s benefits for
the millions of small farmers bypassed by the green revo-
lution technologies. Drip irrigation’s water-saving and yield-
increasing potential raises the prospect of increasing the
productivity and incomes of some of the poorest sectors
of the rural population. Experience to date in India, Nepal,
and China suggests substantial unmet demand for afford-
able drip irrigation.
We are launching a worldwide effort to spread low-
cost drip irrigation in developing countries with the aim of
reducing the hunger and increasing the incomes of 150
million of the world’s poorest rural people over the next 15
years. Our estimates suggest that the widespread use of
affordable drip irrigation has the potential to boost annual
net income among the rural poor by some US$3 billion per
year and inject two or three times this amount into the
IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001
poorest parts of the developing world’s economies. This
initiative is ambitious and will require effective partner-
ships among private-sector companies, nongovernmental
organizations, agricultural research organizations, univer-
sities, government agencies, donors, and private founda-
tions. We believe this initiative to be among the most
constructive and promising responses to persistent pov-
erty, hunger, and water scarcity that has been attempted
to date.
Acknowledgement
The authors thank the Ford Foundation in India for
support to prepare this article.
About the Authors
Sandra Postel is Director of the Global Water Policy
Project in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Visiting Senior
Lecturer at Mount Holyoke College. She is author of Pil-
lar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? (W.W.
Norton and Co., 1999), and of Last Oasis, (W.W. Norton
and Co., 1992, 1997), which now appears in nine languages
and was the basis for a public television documentary that
aired in 1997. A past member of IWRA’s Board of Direc-
tors, she writes and lectures widely on global water is-
sues. She can be located at 107 Larkspur Dr., Amherst,
Massachusetts, 01002 USA. Email: spostel@javanet.com.
Fax 413-256-0309. Paul Polak is a physician and psy-
chiatrist who has written 70 articles on the social and en-
vironmental context of mental illness. His address is 10403
W. Colfax St., Lakewood, Colorado, USA 80215. Email
ppolak@ideorg.org. Fax Number 303 /232 4336 ext13. In
1981, he founded International Development Enterprises
(IDE) and has served as its president to date. IDE has
pioneered the design and private sector rural mass mar-
keting of affordable irrigation technologies for small farm-
ers in developing countries. The 1.3 million treadle pumps
installed in Bangladesh as a result of IDE’s activities have
increased the net income of 6 million people by US$130
million per year. Fernando Gonzales Villareal is the
Senior Irrigation Advisor to the World Bank, 1818 H. St.,
Rm. MC5-825 Washington, DC, USA 20433. E-mail
fgonzalez@worldbank.org. Fax 202/522-3306. He was a
prime mover in the establishment of a national water us-
ers organization in Mexico, and in shifting control of a sub-
stantial part of the canal system from the government to
the water users organization. Jack Keller is CEO of
Keller-Blisner Engineering, LLC, 35 River Park Drive,
Logan, Utah, USA 84321. Email Address:
jkeller@kelbli.com. Fax Number: 435/752-9542, and Pro-
fessor Emeritus, Biological and Irrigation Engineering
Department, Utah State University. He has provided ad-
visory services on irrigation matters in 52 countries and is
recognized as an expert in irrigation technology transfer
and problems associated with improving irrigated agricul-
 Drip Irrigation for Small Farmers:
A New Initiative to Alleviate Hunger and Poverty
ture in both developing and developed countries. His cur-
rent consulting is related to efficient irrigated agricultural
development, river basin water management, and conser-
vation planning.
Discussions open until September 1, 2001.
References
Bilgi, M. 1999. “Socio-Economic Study of the IDE Promoted
Micro-Irrigation Systems in Aurangabad and Bijapur.” Pre-
pared for Swiss Development Cooperation, New Delhi, India.
Brown, E.P. and R. Nooter. 1991. “Successful Small-Scale Irriga-
tion in the Sahel.” Washington, DC, USA: The World Bank.
Brown, L. R., M. Renner, and B. Halweil, eds. 1999. Vital Signs
1999. New York, New York, USA: W.W. Norton and Co.
Bucks, D. 1998. Private communication (July 1), U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville,
Maryland.
Bucks, D. 1995. “Historical Developments in Microirrigation.”
F.R. Lamm, ed. Micro-irrigation for a Changing World, Pro-
ceedings of the Fifth International Microirrigation Congress,
St. Joseph, Michigan: American Society of Agricultural En-
gineers.
Chambers, R. 1988. Managing Canal Irrigation: Practical
Analysis from South Asia. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cam-
bridge University Press.
FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization). 1999.
The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Rome, Italy.
Gardner, G. and B. Halweil. 2000. Underfed and Overfed: The
Global Epidemic of Malnutrition. Washington, DC, USA:
Worldwatch Institute.
International Development Enterprises (IDE). 1998. “Monitor-
ing and Evaluation Reports (April and May).” Lakewood,
Colorado, USA.
International Development Enterprises. 2000. “Monitoring and
Evaluation Report (July).” Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Indian National Committee on Irrigation and Drainage. 1994.
Drip Irrigation in India. New Delhi, India.
Keller, J. and R.D. Blisner. 1990. Sprinkle and Trickle Irriga-
tion. New York, New York, USA: Chapman and Hall.
Polak, P., B. Nanes, and D. Adhikari. 1997. “A Low Cost Drip
Irrigation System for Small Farmers in Developing Countries.”
Journal of the American Water Resources Association 33,
No. 1: 119–124.
Polak, P. 1997. Interviews with key dealers of Jain Irrigation
Company, Jalgoan, Maharashtra, September, 1997, and per-
sonal communication with Sudarshan Suryawanshi, Interna-
tional Development Enterprises, New Delhi, India.
IWRA, Water International, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2001
View publication stats
13
Polak, P., W. Morgan, and J. Saussier. 1999a. “Increasing the
Productivity of the World’s Micro-farmers.” Sustainable
Agriculture Solutions: The Action Report of the Sustain-
able Agriculture Initiative. London, United Kingdom:
Novello Press, Ltd.: 140–143.
Polak, P., B. Nanes, and J. Sample. 1999b. “Opening Access to
Affordable Micro-Plot Irrigation for Small Farmers.” Presented
at Irrigation Association Symposium on Small-holder Irriga-
tion, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Polak, P. 2000a. “The Design Process for the IDE Low Cost Drip
Irrigation System.” Poverty Alleviation as a Business: The
Market Creation Approach to Development. Berne Switzer-
land: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation: 95–
100.
Polak, P. 2000b (March). “Interviews with Farmers Growing Let-
tuce, Flowers, and Coriander.” Hue Region, Vietnam.
Polak, P. and R.K. Sivanappan. 1998. “The Potential Contribu-
tion of Low Cost Drip Irrigation to the Improvement of Irriga-
tion Productivity in India.” India–Water Resources
Management Sector Review: Report on the Irrigation Sec-
tor. Washington, DC, USA: The World Bank in cooperation
with the Government of India.
Postel, S. 1992, 1997 rev. Last Oasis. New York, New York, USA:
W.W. Norton and Co.
Postel, S. 1999. Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?
New York, New York, USA: W.W. Norton and Co.
Postel, S. 2000. “Entering an Era of Water Scarcity: The Chal-
lenges Ahead,” Ecological Applications 10: 941–948.
Sachs, J. 1999. “Helping the World’s Poorest.” The Economist.
14 August.
Shah, T., M. Alam, M.D. Kumar, R.K. Nagar, and M. Singh. Un-
dated. “Pedal Pump and the Poor: Social Impact of a Manual
Irrigation Technology in South Asia.” Pre-publication manu-
script.
Sivanappan, R.K. 1994. “Prospects of Micro-Irrigation in In-
dia.” Irrigation and Drainage Systems 8: 49–58.
Suryawanshi, S.K. 1995. “Success of Drip in India: An Example
to the Third World.” F.R. Lamm, ed. Micro-irrigation for a
Changing World. Proceedings of the Fifth International Mi-
cro-irrigation Congress, St. Joseph, Michigan: American
Society of Agricultural Engineers.
van Hofwegen, P. and M. Svendsen. 2000. A Vision of Water for
Food and Rural Development. The Hague, The Netherlands:
The World Water Forum.
Van Quang, N. 2000. International Development Enterprises,
Vietnam Office, private communication.
Vickers, A. in press. Handbook of Water Use and Conservation.
Amherst, Massachusetts: WaterPlow Press.
World Bank. 1993. Gains that Might be Made from Water Con-
servation in the Middle East. Washington, DC, USA.